Beyond the island: Top mythologist reorients the geography of the Ramayana

By Rajiv Shah   

In a compelling new analysis that challenges conventional geographical assumptions about the ancient epic, writer and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik has traced the roots of the Ramayana to the forests and river systems of Central and Eastern India, rather than the peninsular south or the modern island nation of Sri Lanka.

Drawing on archaeological evidence, ecological markers, and literary analysis in an article published in The Hindu, Pattanaik uses a striking 11th-century sculpture from Ratanpur in Chhattisgarh as a starting point to unravel what he describes as “older memories that go back 3,000 years.”

A Sculpture That Tells a Different Story

The article, titled “From Cult to Culture: The Ravana of Ratanpur,” focuses on a rare sculpture found at the Ratanpur Fort. It depicts Ravana in an act not described in Valmiki’s Ramayana: cutting off his own heads to offer into a sacrificial fire.

“This scene does not come from Valmiki’s Ramayana, but from a later imagination,” Pattanaik writes. He notes that the offering is made to Brahma in the Mahabharata’s ‘Ramapakhyana’ and to Shiva in later regional versions. The sculpture, dating to around 1000 CE, serves as a physical marker of how the epic’s narrative has evolved through regional traditions and centuries of retelling.

Ecology as Evidence

Central to Pattanaik’s argument is the ecological landscape described in the Valmiki Ramayana. He points to the repeated mention of sala trees, which do not grow in southern India.

“Sala forests do not grow in southern India. They grow in central and eastern India, north of Chhattisgarh and closer to the Himalayan foothills,” he states. He argues that the forest Rama enters is not the peninsular Tamilakam or Kerala, but the dense forest belt of Central India.

Similarly, he connects the Ashoka tree, abundant in the wet mountainous regions of Odisha, to Sita’s captivity. “In the Ramayana, Sita is held captive in a garden full of Ashoka trees. This again points to an eastern-central Indian ecology.”

Pattanaik delineates a specific geographical zone bounded by four great rivers—the Ganga to the north, the Godavari to the south, the Mahanadi to the east, and the Narmada to the west—as the true setting for the epic’s core events. He notes that the region, once known as Dakshina Kosala, lies just south of Rama’s homeland, Uttara Kosala.

The Buddhist Connection and a Later Shift

The mythologist further observes that the sala and Ashoka trees are deeply embedded in Buddhist lore—the Buddha was born under an Ashoka tree and died between two sala trees.

“Ravana’s Lanka being linked to these two trees cannot be a coincidence,” Pattanaik argues, suggesting it reflects a “Brahmin-Buddhist conflict in the post-Ashokan era.”

He traces a dramatic geographical shift in popular memory to after 1000 CE, during the Chola period. Locked in conflict with Sri Lankan kings and dependent on copper resources, the Cholas began to identify Sri Lanka with Ravana’s Lanka.

“Cities such as Anuradhapura are plundered. Sinhaladvipa becomes equated with the rakshasa kingdom,” he writes. He adds that this identification was retrospectively reinforced by the Lankavatara Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist text whose symbolic “Lanka” was later conflated with the physical island.

Legacy in the Landscape

By the Vijayanagara period (circa 1500 CE), Pattanaik notes that the Deccan had been re-imagined as Kishkindha, the land of monkeys, with hundreds of Hanuman temples built across the region. This, he argues, caused the older memory of Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh and Central India to “fade from popular consciousness.”

Yet, he concludes, traces of this older geography endure. River names like Subarnarekha, cities such as Sonpur and Ratanpur, and local legends continue to echo the figure of Ravana. Notably, the medieval Gand kings of the region minted coins claiming descent from the rakshasa king, distinguishing themselves from other Rajput lineages and preserving a unique cultural memory that predates the modern political narratives surrounding the epic.